TRios_Zen said:
This is a good question, and I'm interested in seeing the Steam integration as well. I agree both that Steam is pretty cool and that consumer demand drives the price of services. The reason the PS3 cost what it does today, is because not enough people were buying it at the price it was. The reason the 360 will eventually drop in price again, is for the same reason, etc, etc. Unfortunately, a crap-load of people ARE paying for Live even at it's current price, so it's unlikely to ever go free (me included....doh!). In fact, I'd agree with others in this thread that this a revenue stream that neither Sony nor Nintendo will ignore for too long. |
I think you guys are overestimating Steam's presence on PSN. As far as I know, it's simply a back end integration that will allow Valve games on PS3 to be patched directly by Valve, rather than going through Sony, which will allow Valve to maintain parity between the PC and PS3 versions of their games. They may (emphasis on may) also provide cloud storage for your saves as well. Outside of this, I'd expect Valve's games to use normal PSN features, like your user ID and Trophies.
| richardhutnik said: Wow, I wish free services like what the PS3 and Wii have had nearly the same level of demos that XBox does. Because people pay for online play, everything from Game Room to Indie games, gets demos. Demos on the Playstation 3? Well, mostly the major disk based released. Playstation store distributed exclusives don't get any. As far as the Wii goes, that is NONE available online. Now, back to the original premise. Somehow, this premise is that large numbers of gamers will magically organize themselves and decide not to pay for Live, thus Microsoft would be forced to discontinue charging for online play... well, based on my first-hand experience, that wish is one that won't happen, no matter how much people wish it be so. No guarantee Microsoft would end up dropping the fee if membership went down. Shoot, they might even decide to INCREASE prices. So, you then get lots of people without XBox Live, and playing online. Want to get organized for something? How about getting organized for something more important, like helping people find work, or helping the poor? Or, something even more simple, which is gaming related: Ignore Pachter to the place where VGChartz will stop dedicating articles to his predictions? I am yet again graced with a Pachter article once more when I pop on here, this time declaring the PSP2 dead before it is even released. |
Paying for LIve is entirely unrelated to the fact that Microsoft mandates that all XBLA games have a demo. Providing a demo is only an added burden for the developer, who then has to prepare multiple builds of their products for release. Sony could easily mandate demos for all PSN releases as well, but they simply choose not to, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they aren't charging for online play.
Though I agree that such a practice is disappointing. If only this thread were about ps3 or Wii, maybe we could talk about this more in-depth.
And I'll go make a thread on helping people find work right now, if that's what constitutes "getting organized" in your book. =/
